Mad Men

A man I know described his career as an advertising executive thus: “If you’ve seen Mad Men, that’s exactly what it was like.” 

I was intrigued. My dad was an ad exec. Could this television series shine a light on, what was to me, a hidden facet of my father’s life?

I settled in to watch. My feet up on the seat of an office chair, a bowl of Fettuccine Alfredo in my lap, I began the descent into the darkness of Don Draper. 

By this time, I was a single adult, uncoupled from the train wreck my marriage had become, living alone in a messy apartment, doing whatever the hell I wanted.

Within a few scenes of Mad Men’s first episode, I'd forgotten all about my dad and the toilet paper company he’d created ad campaigns for. Forgotten about being forbidden as a child to use the word ‘Kleenex’. Gone was Dad's employer’s futile struggle against the soon to become generic term. 

Engrossed in the show, where most of the male characters were costumed how my dad actually looked in the 1960’s, clean shaven, with a Brylcreem side part, horn-rimmed glasses, dressed in single-breasted suit jackets and baggy pants, I forgot all about the secret of the fluffy white kittens in the toilet paper commercial. 

It was two kittens made to look like a litter.

Or was it a litter made to look like two kittens?

I can’t remember the secret now, but advertising is like that — a world of swimming against the current, trying to redirect it, and deception. 

No, as I became enthralled in the maddeningly locked-up motivations of Don Draper, I forgot about my dad and the toilet paper company that had paid his salary and provided our family with a middle class existence. 

Don Draper is just the kind of delicious bastard I always fall for. A magnetic man with wandering eyes, bad to the bone.

I can change him, my inner craziness determines. 

I will be the ultimate love of his life. 

How many times has that scenario run in my life? How often have I let a man really know who I am? And when did I ever take the time to determine the answer to that question for myself?

Answers: Too often. Never. Now.

Holed up in my messy apartment, with whatever the hell I wanted to eat, the freedom to binge Mad Men intoxicated me. 

A delicious freedom. 

My attraction to Don Draper was a grim discovery. Nevertheless it was a cell I locked myself into many times. 

I ate more fettuccine.

On and on, I was consumed.

I hope you enjoyed this passage from my in-progress book, Big Love

Let me know if it raised any thoughts or memories for you, I’d love to hear about them. I’ll be sending out a new piece every Sunday.

Since the pandemic…

Let’s be honest, I grabbed hard to the pandemic and squeezed out of it every ounce of solitude and writing time I could. Since 2019, I’ve written two novels and many pieces for Big Love. One of the novels, a lighthearted romp in the life of a middle-aged woman, will be published this year on New Year’s Eve. The other, a novel inspired by the song, Long Black Veil will be published later in 2024. I’ll keep you posted.